By Nancy Phillips and David O'Reilly
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 22, 2005

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/12707654.htm

A grand jury yesterday excoriated the Philadelphia Archdiocese and its
former top leaders, saying they allowed hundreds of sexual assaults against
children to go unpunished and protected the priests who committed the
crimes.

In searing language, the panel accused former church officials - including
Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol - of "burying"
abuse reports, ignoring warnings about abusive priests, and shuttling
offenders from parish to parish, where some found new victims.

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said
it was too late to press charges. MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Inquirer Staff
Photographer

"Sexually abusive priests were left quietly in place or 'recycled'
to unsuspecting new parishes - vastly expanding the number of children
who were abused," the grand jury concluded.

The hierarchy "excused and enabled the abuse" for decades,
the grand jury said in a 418-page report, while demonstrating "utter
indifference to the suffering of the victims."

The grand jurors, who spent three years investigating, concluded that
Krol and Bevilacqua were more concerned with protecting the reputation
and legal and financial interests of the archdiocese than the children
entrusted to its care.

"In its callous, calculating manner, the archdiocese's 'handling'
of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself,"
the grand jury stated in its report.

Yet the panel recommended no criminal charges, saying it was thwarted
by the statute of limitations and a church hierarchy that keep silent
about the abuses until it was too late for prosecutors to make a case.

"Regrettably, the perpetrators of these crimes and the people who
protected them will never face the criminal penalties that they deserve,"
District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said yesterday.

The report called on the legislature to enact a broad array of legislation,
including a recall of the statute of limitations related to sexual abuse
of minors.

The archdiocese angrily denounced the grand jury report as "incredibly
biased and anti-Catholic." In a blistering 70-page response, the
church officials and lawyers called it "a vile, mean-spirited diatribe."

While condemning the "abhorrent behavior" of abusive priests,
the church vigorously defended Krol and Bevilacqua and said the report
was "rife with mistakes, unsupported inferences and misguided conclusions."

Cardinal Justin Rigali, who succeeded Bevilacqua as archbishop in 2003,
defended his predecessors, telling a news conference that the archdiocese
under Krol and Bevilacqua had sought "to do what was thought to be
the most effective thing at the time." But, he added, "we wouldn't
do the same things today."

Abraham fired back at the church's rebuttal with a memo of her own, saying
it was filled with the "all too familiar denials, deceptions and
evasions" that she said had characterized the church's handling of
the abuse crisis.

She said the response gave her no confidence that the church's responses
to abuse complaints "will be better in the future."

Abuse victims praised Abraham and the grand jurors, saying its breadth
and scope of the report were remarkable.

"I don't know how Lynne Abraham could have been more forceful,"
said John Salveson, a local spokesman for Survivors Network of those Abused
by Priests.

"The truth, as horrifying as it is, is now out in the open. We believe
it will help survivors heal."

The grand jury report was startling in its expression of sheer outrage
and striking for the depth of detail of the abuses.

"What we have found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in
His name and defiled it," the grand jury said.

The grand jury concluded that at least 63 priests - and probably many
more - abused hundreds of victims over the past several decades.

According to the report, victims of the abuse included:

An 11-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by a priest who took her
for an abortion when she became pregnant.

A fifth grader who was molested by a priest inside a confessional.

A teenage girl who was groped by a priest while she lay immobilized in
traction in a hospital room.

A priest who offered money to boys in exchange for sadomasochistic acts
of bondage and wrote a letter asking a boy to make him his "slave."
The priest remains in ministry.

A priest who abused boys playing the roles of Jesus and other biblical
characters in a parish Passion play by making them disrobe, don loincloths,
and whip each other until they had cuts, bruises and welts.

A priest who falsely told a 12-year-old boy his mother knew of the assaults
and consented to the rape of her son.

The grand jury found that many victims were abused for years and that
many priests abused multiple victims, sometimes preying on members of
the same family.

The Rev. Albert T. Kostelnick had 18 victims, according to the grand
jury. The Rev. James J. Brzyski, whose conduct the report described as
a "criminal rampage," abused 17 victims, many of them from a
single parish. The Rev. Nicholas V. Cudemo abused 16 victims, staying
in ministry for decades after the first abuse report came in 1966.

"We find it hard to comprehend or absorb the full extent of the
malevolence and suffering visited on this community, under cover of the
clerical collar, by powerful, respected and rapacious priests," the
jurors wrote.

Files the church turned over to prosecutors as part of the investigation
involved accusations against 169 priests made since 1967. Many, however,
were incomplete, the grand jury said. In some, victims' names were not
recorded, while others concealed the abuse with euphemisms. Attempted
rapes, for example, were sometimes described as "touches," the
grand jury reported.

The grand jury investigation, led by Abraham's prosecutors, chose to
focus on 63 cases it was able to document, and outlined 28 in detail.

In those cases, the jurors found evidence that Krol - who was archbishop
from 1961 to 1988 - routinely reassigned abusive priests in order to avoid
scandal.

"For most of Cardinal Krol's tenure, concealment mainly entailed
victims' persuading parents not to report the priests' crimes to police,
and transferring priests to other parishes if parents demanded it or if
'general scandal' seemed imminent," according to the report.

Under Bevilacqua, who was archbishop from 1988 to 2003, the report said
fear of costly lawsuits motivated church officials to conceal abuses from
law enforcement authorities, parishioners and the public.

The grand jury reported that Bevilacqua had a "strict policy, according
to his aides, that forbid informing parishioners... about any problems
in a priest's background."

"Parishioners were not told, or were misled about, the reason for
the abuser's transfer," according to the report. "...The result
of the Archdiocese's purposeful action was to multiply the number of children
exposed to these priests while reducing the possibility that their parents
could protect them."

The files are replete with examples of cases in which Bevilacqua reassigned
abusive priests or allowed them to remain in ministry.

In one case, he assigned an admitted abuser, the Rev. John J. Delli Carpini,
to write homilies and speeches for him and to work in the archdiocesan
press office, even as it fielded inquiries about the sex-abuse scandal.

Della Carpini, diagnosed with a "sexual disorder and severe personality
disorder," had admitting to assaulting a boy for years. The victim
reported the assaults to the church in 1998; Bevilacqua allowed the priest
to remain in ministry and live in a parish until 2002, the report said.

Bevilacqua allowed known abusers to remain in ministry after receiving
warnings about them, the grand jurors said. In three cases, the priests
abused again after finding more victims in their new assignments, the
panel said.

The grand jury said church officials did not call police to report assaults
against children, even in cases in which priests admitted the attacks.
Asked why the church had not alerted police, Bevilacqua told the grand
jury that the law did not require them to.

"That answer is unacceptable," the grand jury said. "It
reflects a willingness to allow such crimes to continue, as well as an
utter indifference to the suffering of the victims."

The grand jury also observed that as recently as 2002, Bevilacqua and
his representatives knowingly understated the extent of sexual abuse within
the church.

The grand jury said it documented scores of crimes by dozens of priests.
There was evidence of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory
sexual assault, indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children,
and corruption of minors.

But in all cases, the panel said, the abuse happened years, if not decades,
ago, and the statute of limitations on any crimes had expired.

The panel said it had considered charging the archdiocese with endangering
the welfare of children, corruption of minors, victim/witness intimidation,
hindering apprehension, and obstruction of justice. But again, it said,
the statute of limitations on any crimes had expired.

So the panel was left with what it described as "a travesty of justice,
a multitude of crimes for which no one can be held criminally accountable."